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Best Free RapidWeaver Plugins/Themes
- Thread starter Ollie N
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I can't say I have ever found free themes or plugins for Rapidwear, then again I have bothered to look all that much. Id say they exist but I don't say in mass numbers and were they are free they may not be all that great.
Id sooner just pay for the themes. It's not expensive and you get pretty good quality pending on who developed it, my favorite developer of Rapidweaver themes would be Elixr.
I have done that a few times that is why I potsed here
I don't really care about customizing
I am saving up for a new MBP (got rapidweaver from MacHeist) so I don't really want to spend that much money
Actually, I think this thread is useful. I just purchased rapidweaver, and i've been looking for good plugins and themes, specifically free ones. I found a maps plugin. I actually could have done without it, by just pasting in the google code snippet, and that's how i started out, but it seemed more maintainable to go w/ a plugin... That one was $14 USD though! So... if someone has some free tools, i'd love to hear!
I dont think theres any definite answer to what are the best free themes, its all to do with what you want and what each could potentially deliver just as there wouldnt be much of consensus on what the best commercial themes are.
Although theres some good freebies out there and hopefully the ones below will be useful it might be worth getting a paid-for plug-in like Stacks or Blocks for use with free themes (heck, you could always build your own). Its not as if these cost the Earth, and would give you much more flexibility - in my opinion, the majority of free themes will give you a very uniform look, which is fine for smaller sites but can get boring very quickly on larger ones.
The main Rapidweaver website is really your best resource not only does it list (probably) every add-on for RW, the forum is a very active one plus, they tend to be a friendly bunch. With themes, it used to be indicated on the RW site by an icon which ones were free, but I dont think thats the case anymore, so youll just have to trawl or using the search function on the site is possibly worth a punt.
Before I start suggesting some stuff, one thing to bear in mind with the free stuff is support for different versions of RW although some people who do free themes will update them (e.g. see below) this isnt always with the case by any means. When RW has had a major update (e.g. from version 3.6 to 4) then often, tools and themes wont work flawlessly. On the other hand, I would say developers generally do release updaters for commercial themes etc, so they work with newer versions of RW. This may not be a huge issue for you, but I think its a good thing to keep in mind.
As mentioned by someone else, customisability tends to be far greater with many professional themes. I know that you said this isnt an issue for you, but I can think of more than a few free themes that are great for a very specific purpose (e.g. an online gallery) but wouldnt be much cop for more varied uses. A lot of RW free themes used to be done as a freebie by professionals, so obviously its in their interest for free stuff to be more limited.
In terms of tools, there arent actually that many designed specifically for RW. Although I know you did say it was FREE you were interested in, Ill still mention TWThemeMiner - $15 and there is a free trial. Its a theme editing assistant thats user-friendly to use and a handy way of examining the different elements of themes if you fancy building your own.
RWMultitool (http://www.rwmultitool.com/quickguide/lite/index.html) is a must a easy to use app to change images in your themes. The link I provided shows you the comparison between the Lite and full versions the Lite version is great (and free!) but the full version has enough to be worth upgrading to.
Okay, themes
http://www.designdifferent.org/themes/ - best place to start, think theres 40-odd here and the guy who does them did update them to RW 4.0. Apple II might pick the interest of one or two here
http://www.bonsai-studio.net/rapidweaver-themes/rapidweaver-themes.html - couple of free ones.
http://www.themeflood.com/freeware.html - quite a few free themes and some snippets too.
Rapid Ideas did used to do a couple of smart, ultra-minimalist ones but Im not sure theyre still on the site or work okay with 4.0.
I know youre after free, but you can get some great deals every so often last year, Elixir Graphics were selling the bundle of all its themes for about $50 for a limited time (the Chameleon one is what used to be used for Michael Bays website).
In terms of plug-ins, I think youd be hard pressed to be find too many free and a fair amount of which are ones that are designed to be used with commercial ones (e.g. the ExtraContent one for Stacks btw have a look into ExtraContent). I might be wrong, but I have a feeling that many free ones arent that compatible with RW 4.0.
If you dont want to pay for plug-ins but have some specific functionality in mind, investigating snippets might be worth a punt.
Do People Still offer "Google it" as a viable answer to a legitimate question?
Amazing...
Amazing...